Massachusetts Mourns a Kennedy Brother, Again

ABBY GOODNOUGH

Friday

Aug 28, 2009 at 5:15 AM

Mourners lined the streets from Hyannis Port, Mass., to Boston, where the procession for Edward M. Kennedy concluded its journey.

BOSTON — Tens of thousands of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s constituents gathered on Thursday along sidewalks, highway medians and overpasses to glimpse the motorcade that carried Mr. Kennedy’s body from the sea-scented village of Hyannis Port, Mass., through downtown Boston and finally to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where many more said goodbye to a man whom most had never met, yet still felt sick to lose.

The late-summer day was cool and almost impossibly bright, helping people like Susan Jackson, 44, a social worker from Worcester, Mass., who described Mr. Kennedy as her lifelong protector, feel marginally better about his death on Tuesday from brain cancer. In general, though, Ms. Jackson said, she felt a little less secure in the world knowing that the senator who had served Massachusetts since before her birth was gone.

“I grew up with my dad always telling me that as long as Ted Kennedy was around, everything was safe,” she said as she waited in line at the library to sign a condolence book. “It’s like I lost a part of my family even though I wasn’t related to him, just because growing up he was so dominant in my house.”

As the motorcade sped along a 70-mile route from Cape Cod to Boston, taking Mr. Kennedy’s body on its final journey through the state he had represented for 47 years, people of all ages, races and nationalities waited at various landmarks in the city for the procession to pass. Some waved flags or signs that said, “Thank You Teddy”; some looked bereft as helicopters droned and gulls squawked overhead.

“I know it’s going to give me chills,” said Annette Luc, 51, a state employee who was waiting for the cortege near Boston Common. “Washington, the Senate, the White House — they all lost a real leader.”

As the motorcade entered the city about 4 p.m., Kennedy family members in the vehicles rolled down their windows and waved at the crowds. Hundreds of onlookers applauded as the hearse passed St. Stephen’s Church in the city’s North End, where Rose Fitzgerald was baptized in 1890 and where her funeral was held in 1995. And as the hearse passed Faneuil Hall, in the heart of downtown, a bell atop the 267-year-old building rang 47 times, once for each year Mr. Kennedy had served in the Senate.

Alberto Castro, 65, who had admired the Kennedy family as a boy growing up in the Dominican Republic, said it felt as if he were losing a piece of himself along with his senator.

“I’m paying my respects to the last of this part of my identity,” said Mr. Castro, who lives in Dorchester and was waiting for the cortege near the State House. “I grew up with J. F. K. in the White House, and it was then I realized there was someone looking out for me. This is the last of that part of my personal history. Senator Kennedy was the youngest of those men who did so much.”

Carlos and Melida Arredondo, who drove the procession route early on Thursday in a pickup truck with an American flag on a 26-foot pole in its bed, said they had come to know Mr. Kennedy after their son, Alex, was killed in Iraq, five years to the day before the senator’s death. Mr. Kennedy helped Mr. Arredondo, 47, become an American citizen, they said, and just before his cancer diagnosis, was trying to get a Bronze Star awarded to their son posthumously.

As she watched the hearse pass, Mrs. Arredondo recalled afterward, “I kept on saying, ‘God bless you, God bless you.’ The families had their windows open — they wanted to hear the public; they wanted to feel the public.”

Several onlookers expressed regret that Congress did not overhaul the health care system — a goal that Mr. Kennedy recently called “the cause of my life” — before his death.

“I have faith, so I know he’s at peace,” said Sue Mathias, 62, of Fall River, Mass. “But it pains me to know that he’ll never see that law he worked so hard for come to fruition.”

Earlier in the day, 85 members of Mr. Kennedy’s extended family spilled from the porch of his white-shingled home in Hyannis Port down to the driveway after a private Catholic Mass, watching silently as an honor guard lifted the senator’s flag-draped coffin into the hearse. They then climbed into limousines, S.U.V.’s and a chartered bus, many touching the hearse gently first.

Family members in attendance included Mr. Kennedy’s sons, Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, who rode in the passenger seat of the hearse, and Edward Kennedy Jr.; Mr. Kennedy’s daughter, Kara; Caroline Kennedy, daughter of Mr. Kennedy’s brother John F. Kennedy; and Maria Shriver, daughter of Mr. Kennedy’s sister Eunice, who died earlier this month.

By the time the motorcade arrived at the J. F. K. Library about 4:45 p.m., several thousand people were waiting in lines that snaked around the building, where Mr. Kennedy’s body is to lie in repose until his funeral on Saturday.

Inside, his coffin was carried past more than 100 current and former members of his staff, some of whom had worked for him for more than 30 years. It was placed behind ropes in the Stephen E. Smith Center, a maple-paneled room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on Boston Harbor.

The lines persisted late into the night, with most people waiting at least three and a half hours to enter. Several family members, including Mr. Kennedy’s son Edward Jr., walked the lines to thank people for coming, while others hugged and shook hands with people inside.

Laura and David Kuykendall of Andover, Mass., said they did not agree with Mr. Kennedy politically but wanted to honor him anyway.

“When you walked into the room it just felt so silent, so solemn,” Mr. Kuykendall, 43, said after leaving the library at about 10 p.m. “It really made me appreciate the loss a lot more.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.